


there is a darkness

by bitterbones (orphan_account)



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Bendemption, Dark Rey, F/M, Resurrection, Shower Sex, reverse anidala if you squint, soft smut, they save each other, tros speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2020-09-26 19:43:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20395129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/bitterbones
Summary: Rey's fall to darkness and into the clutches of Darth Sidious spurs Kylo Ren's return to the light. Desperate to save her, he would do anything, even join ranks with the Resistance. Rey, mind twisted by Palpatine and the darkness within, believes that her new path will save the people she loves from destruction.-[Episode IX speculation fic with a healthy dose of reverse anidala, dark!rey, and bendemption]





	there is a darkness

**Author's Note:**

> This is hardcore reach, but a reylo ca dream.

There was a darkness inside of her. Wrapped up in her light, encapsulated, it festered deep and viscous. It waited, patiently, as she denied it and championed the light. Certainly, Rey was light also, but her hurts had made her equally dark. 

It waited until a voice found her in the night. 

_You aren’t strong enough_. 

And another. 

_You are but a single, foolish girl._

Another still. 

_The Resistance will fall._

Night after night it whispered its poison. 

_Everyone you love will die. Your parents left you to rot. Your new family will perish for your failures._

It goaded her until she could not sleep, until her eyes were bloodshot and her steps jilted. It broke her down to nothing, until the darkness was restrained by only a hairs breadth of precarious light. 

Then it offered a solution. 

_Come to me, Rey. And it will be so that you can protect the people you love, always. Come to me and I will make you strong._

So possessed was she by the need to save these people— Finn and Rose, Poe and Jannah, Leia and Kaydel and every member of their tiny band of rebels— that she left Anakin Skywalker’s lightsaber behind as she crept into the black desert night. 

_No matter_, the voice said_, you will build one when you arrive._

Arrive where? She did not know. Her hands moved freely of her own will over the auto pilot controls. And when the _Millennium Falcon _rose into the air, kicking up clouds of ancient sand and dust, the whole encampment came alive. 

It would be just moments before her absence was noted, weeks before they saw her again; a changed woman; face cast red in the spitting light of her own saber, amber eyes swimming in darkness. 

*

Kylo Ren woke in despair. Every inch of his skin crawling with intense discomfort. Something had shifted diametrically within the force and as he wiped the sleep from his eyes he could almost—

_Oh._

“No.” He said into the darkness of his sparse quarters, “_No_.” 

Rey had fallen. Rey, his light, the woman who had turned him against his foul master and showed him that there was a middle path, though they disagreed on the means. 

Rey had _fallen_. He felt her still in his chest, where their connection sat snug and familiar, only now it bled with the darkest darkness; anguish and anger pulsing where once there had been gentleness and reluctant understanding. 

No. 

The path she walked would lead only to destruction. He knew. _Force_, he knew. Kylo Ren had walked it himself. 

Frantic, desperate, he threw his thin coverlet aside and strode to a module meant to contain and preserve. When it opened with a hydraulic _hiss _in a cloud of steam that made his eyes water, he teetered over the razor edge he had been balancing on since the throne room, since Starkiller, since the day he turned. 

In the eyes of Darth Vader’s disfigured helm he no longer saw a legacy, but a tragedy. The tragedy of Anakin Skywalker, of Padmé and Leia and Luke. The tragedy of his bloodline poisoned and manipulated by a blight upon the force, a creature determined to hold the galaxy in permanent chaos. 

And now Darth Sidious held Rey in his clutches. A ghost still clinging to his warpath. 

Kylo shook and shouted and sobbed, he tore into the walls with his saber and rained sparks down over his head like baptismal fire. he gnashed his teeth and swore and tried desperately to _reach her_. But between them now there was a wall, erected as he slept and as she despaired. He could hardly feel her beyond her pain. 

There had always been darkness in her, and light, all wrapped up in one another. Maybe he had both as well. He had chosen her, after all, he had let his mother live. Maybe he would have to save her as she had saved him, free her from Palpatine as she had liberated him from Snoke. Once she had revealed to him the light that still lived within, now he would do the same for her. The darkness would not take her from him, not wholly. Ben Solo would not allow Rey to be lost. 

Ben Solo. 

It was like Kylo Ren had never been real. A dream in the midst of a fever; violent and nonsensical. 

When he fled his flagship he left everything behind but the clothes on his back and the hood that obscured his scarred face. Even the masks, his own and Anakin’s, remained behind as he foraged ahead. It was as he entered hyperspace in the cockpit of a stolen TIE that he realized he had left his lightsaber behind as well. 

He didn’t care. It was a brutal reminder of a broken boy, who had pushed himself so cruelly into the darkness that he had to bleed his crystal until it cracked. 

Fuck the saber. Ben Solo had found new focus, a new vital purpose in this war. 

He would save Rey from the very same darkness that had consumed him for so long. 

Who better to help her than a person just as broken as she. 

*

Rey hardly had to make the crystals bleed. They shimmered red within moments under her touch. All around her a ghost smiled, the very fabric of the force a spiraling maw of endless blackness. 

_Very good. I wonder now why I ever bothered with the boy, had I waited a decade I might have saved myself so much trouble._

Phantom fingers caressed down her spine. Rey shivered at the wrongness of it, but her eyes flashed from amber to citrine then back again. How easily the darkness fit her, conforming to her spirit like a well fitting glove. 

She knew now that it had always been there. Luke was right. She had gone straight to it on Ahch-To. It had always whispered to her from the blackest reaches of her mind, in her dreams. 

This spirit, this _thing— Sidious, _it whispered— it would guide her, it would show her the way with a gladness Luke had lacked. 

* 

It was Lando who received him on the sands Pasaana. The man had grown old. In awe of the years Ben choked back tears and stood dumbly, waiting for the old Smuggler’s reaction. 

“Ben?” A question as to who, exactly had come. Kylo Ren would not be welcome, but perhaps Ben Solo will. 

Swallowing around his guilt, Ben replied, “Yes, it’s me, uncle—

_Unca Wanwo_

He broke. So did Lando. They met in the shadow of a TIE fighter. The embrace was tight and warm and welcoming. Ben sobbed like a child, his uncle held him tight, clutching him until he was through. 

When they pulled apart Ben saw that Lando’s eyes were wet as well, his weathered face streaked with tears. That softness faded quickly, and a shadow passed between them. The shadow of Han Solo. 

“I’ll show you the way to encampment. Your mother is away attempting to procure allies. She doesn’t know you’re here.” 

His voice had chilled significantly. 

“Uncle— 

“No.” Lando cut him off, “Prove it with your actions, boy. Show me you’ve come home and then I’ll believe it.” His voice was tinged with sudden, intense emotion. 

Ben nodded and followed. 

He hadn’t given much thought to his mother up until now. 

What would she think?

*

Her saber spat from both ends. Blazing red it crackled and hissed in the damp sea air. Hers. All hers. Crafted by Rey’s own hand. She spun it with the same grace that she twirled her bow-staff. Only this felt more natural, light in her palms. The hilt pulsed with the life of her crystals. 

She felt so powerful. 

_You are powerful, Rey. _Sidious soothed. _You will bring this war to an end, because of you there will be little bloodshed. But first you must sway them to understand our reasoning._

Right, yes. Allow her to rule for a time with Sidious behind her, to end the skirmishes and crush any uprisings. Then, once the battle was won, and there was true, unending peace, they would relinquish control to a new, civilian elected republic. 

Leia would understand. Leia would see the wisdom in this plan. 

_Yes._ Sidious chortled, _Skywalkers have always been quite amiable to reason._

Rey shuddered, a deep instinctual thing from deep in her chest, but she did not know why. 

No one would die. She would protect the people she loved, her family. That her saber roared red meant nothing in the face of that truth. Her eyes flashed amber to citrine. 

*

It was the night before the final battle when Leia returned to her Resistance. They had moved from the scalding, arid desert of Pasaana to the clammy, salt-air of an unnamed planet. It’s only claim to notoriety being the presence of the the fallen Death Star slowly eroding into it’s endless oceans. 

Ben waited at the back of the crowd as people jostled and shoved to watch her disembark and hear the good news. Already they could see the fleet breaking atmo overhead. A new army to back them come the morning. Yet still they longed to hear it from the General’s own lips. How she commanded respect. 

It was daunting. 

He had made a few, tentative friends in the previous weeks. Finn surprisingly showed him the most kindness. Two First Order defects, comrades in a sense. Still, the rebel was rightfully wary. 

Suddenly fearful of rejection, Ben slunk back to his tent, easily avoiding detection as his mother began to speak. 

He was here for Rey, to save her and escape with her. Broken creatures like them did not fit well into tapestry of ideologues that was the Resistance. They would fly to the farthest flung reaches of the galaxy and be what they were, dark and light, terrible and beautiful. 

Ben laid down on his bedroll and threw an arm haphazardly over his eyes. He loved her, Rey. With every blistered, broken fiber of his being he _loved her._ He had suspected on Starkiller. He had _known_ on the Supremacy. Every shared moment since had solidified his suspicion. 

_He loved her_. 

And Palpatine was hurting her, twisting her insides and overwhelming her with darkness such that she could not withstand. He was taking her aches, those deep insecurities and fears and using them to make her unbalanced, thrusting her into such mental agony that she could no longer feel, only listen and obey. Her natural darkness, beautiful, perfect as it was, was inflated so that it might swallow her whole. 

That had been his own reality, once. She had broken him of it with a simple touch of her hand. 

_Force help him, he loved her_. 

Ben Solo ached for her, at the thought of the duress she was under. He could feel a glimmer of it through their constricted bond. Pulses, impressions of her suffering. 

The flap of his tent opened, a shaft of light coming to rest over the bulk of his body, and within it a shadow in grey mourning robes. 

“Ben.”

He dropped his arm from his face, and for a moment his internal voice was that of a child.

_Mommy_. 

She did not sound angry, nor disappointed. Her rough voice wavered with something like hope. 

Ben sat up, then stood, hunched slightly to fit the roof of the tent. She was so much older than she had been. Her eyes were wiser, sadder, her hair had lost its color. She had lost and inch or two. It was hard to tell when he had always towered above her so. 

“Mom.” His fists clenched and unclenched anxiously at his sides. He did not want to shatter this moment, did not want to see her expression shift from awe to fear or regret. 

He didn’t need to move. She went to him with speed that belied her age. Her arms found his torso and her face his chest and she sobbed against him. 

Ben’s arms came around her and he cried too, great, aching sobs for all the years lost; for all the sorrow and hatred. For Han Solo, for the battle of Crait, for failing his mother so. For making her cry like this. 

“No,” she breathed, “No that is behind us now.” She pulled back but kept her hands squarely on his shoulders. 

Han. He had to say something, he had_—_

Leia’s small hands squeezed his shoulders to the point of discomfort, “I said it was forgiven, Ben. Your father forgave you before you had even struck him. That you’ve come home tells me you are sorry. You’re my son, I _love _you, and that’s all I need.” 

Ben clenched his jaw. Love. Rey. “You know about Rey?” 

Leia’s face fell, “Yes. I received a transmission from her on my transport two days ago. It was a demand for surrender. Palpatine is bleeding her for all she is, Ben. Her eyes...” She trailed off and there was horror etched into weathered lines of her face, “The darkness has consumed her like it never did you. It reminds me of my father.” 

“She is not Anakin, I’ll save her before it gets that far.” His body was tense, eyes desperate. He could not lose her. 

Leia shook her head slowly, eyes dropping to the floor, when they lifted again they were calm and filled with resolve. “You know the story of Padmé, yes?”

Ben nodded. Leia said no more of her, understanding passing between mother and son wordlessly. 

“Now, speaking of Anakin, come with me, I have something for you.”   
  


Ben followed his mother, eyes still puffy from crying, out into the dreary daylight. 

*

The day was upon them. Calls for surrender unheard, the forces of the New Empire under the command of Darth Sidious would face Leia Organa’s Resistance on the field of battle. 

The battle began in the skies, TIEs and x-wings shrieking through the air, the flashing of their canons accompanying the crack of lightning in the thunderheads. Then sithtrooper and stormtrooper met in open combat on the land. Red and white armor blurring pink in the endless downpour. 

Leia Organa, with the help of Finn, had led a stormstrooper rebellion. Now they served the Resistance, the New Republic, while the rest of the First Order sided rightfully with Sidious. 

Rey breathed. Saber clipped neatly to her belt. She watched the battle unfold, knowing that Ben would come to face her soon enough. 

_One death_. The voice had whispered, _One death to save all the rest. He is their hope. He must die so that peace may reign._

When at first she had protested, Sidious had lanced such shooting, burning pain through her body that she could not even cry out. It had continued until she realized he was right, that she was foolish

to question him. Ben Solo must die. 

She felt him in the dwindling connection between them. The one he had closed off so that he did not have to contend with her. Sidious had said so. Ben Solo hated her, but he would lie and tell her he loved her. 

_But no one loves you. That is how you know it is a lie. Kill him and they will come to love you, because you have saved them_. 

They met in the downpour, and as he dropped his grey hood to reveal his face the rain dwindled and then ceased, as though the force itself wanted her to look upon his face. 

He was beautiful, dripping with water, eyes dark and sad. She looked at the scar that bisected his pale face, and when she tried to remember when she had painted it onto him her mind lanced with

sharp pain. 

“Rey.” His deep voice shook, it was so soothing compared to Sidious’, “Rey, come back with me. We don’t have to fight.” She wanted to lean in closer, she wanted to ask him to sing to her.

She shook the unwelcome thought from her head. She had one purpose on this day. 

Rey stepped forward and pushed her black hood off of her head. At her side her saber spat to life, thrumming reassuringly in her palm. 

Across the narrow platform from her, Ben’s expression shifted to something like horror as he beheld her face, illuminated bloody crimson.   
  


Rey sneered at him and lunged. 

*

Even twisted by darkness she was beautiful, he thought. Her eyes were yellow. Not even his own had turned yellow, the mark of a true Sith. But he had never been touched so directly by Palpatine. Ben wanted to cry for how broken she was, how, for a moment, her face had twisted with confusion as she took him in. 

Her memories had been altered, she did not know Ben Solo. 

Then she lunged for him, and his grandfather’s saber hummed to life in his palm, natural as breathing. He parried her initial strike, then feinted backwards, before jerking forward to swipe at her black tunic. 

She spun away unscathed, saber twirling with deadly grace. She was so beautiful. 

“Rey!” He called out to her as she landed in a crouch, raindrops began to patter around them again. Light, but the rolling thunderheads promised another downpour. Above them lightning flashed and an x-wing spun in a death dive towards the rolling ocean. 

“Rey, listen to me. I don’t want to hurt you.” He pleaded, and she rushed him again. 

“Liar!” She spat, striking with uncharacteristic brutality, “You want to kill me, and if I die everyone dies.” 

He blocked each blow, violet glowing between their sabers, “I could never hurt you!” He was growing more desperate, her strength was unnatural, fueled by Palpatine himself, “I love you, Rey. I could never hurt you!”

He could see in the set of her face that Palpatine had prepared her for such a confession, that she would not be swayed. 

“Lies.” Rey snapped, but her strikes came with less force now, like she was giving him a chance to prove her wrong, “No one has ever loved me. I am alone.” 

Ben, seeing an opening, moved swiftly to disarm her, but she was too fleet footed, and dodged away again. 

“Try to remember,” he entreated, “Remember how I looked at you, on the Supremacy. You knew it then, you saw it in my eyes! Remember Starkiller, remember when we touched on Ahch-To!”

Her brow furrowed in confusion, and then pain, as though remembering physically hurt. 

“I’ve always loved you.” He reinforced, “From the moment you pushed back in that interrogation room, I _loved you_. He’s manipulating you like Snoke did me! He’s taking your fears and using them to control you, Rey!” 

He walked forward slowly, inching towards where she crouched, her body doubled over in pain as she fought with ferocity of a Jakku scavenger. All around them the force began to shift with Palpatine’s rage. 

“_Lies_.” Rey said, but it was weak, and spoken to the rusted metal of the platform. Then she looked up at him, her eyes wide and full of tears, amber. 

“_Ben_?” It was weak, afraid. The rain did nothing to mask her tears. She was so frightened, in so much pain. 

Overwhelmed with relief he opened his mouth to reply, but the words never passed his lips. The clouds opened wide and from them a bolt of forking purple lighting coursed and shot through his body. 

He shook, and staggered, and with a final longing look at Rey where she collapsed shocked on the ground, Ben Solo died. 

In his final moments he was grateful that Rey had remembered. And he wondered what might have been. 

Then there was nothing. 

*

The truth came back to her in a mighty flood, memories mingling with lies in her skull, but all she could see was Ben dead on the durasteel before her. Limp, lifeless. Rey screamed. 

“No no no no no no no,” she begged, pulling his head into her lap. His dark eyes were wide and unseeing, full lips parted. The skies opened up and a torrent of rain fell around her. 

_Now, Rey_— __

_“Shut up!” _She sobbed, forcing Sidious from her head. She pressed her face into Ben’s soaked hair and sobbed at the smell of char. 

What had she done? _Force help her, what had she done?_

There was no way to make this right, no way to correct this grievous error. Ben Solo was dead in her arms, reeking of scorch. He had come here to save her, had come here to tell her he _loved _her, and she had let him die. 

Damn the dark and the light, damn the First Order and the Resistance. Ben Solo was _dead_. 

And she loved him, too. She had loved him since Ahch-To, since the throne room when she had almost taken his hand. She should have. It would have saved her this moment. 

More than anything she wanted to die, too. 

_It was all her fault._

Then inkling of a thought, as Sidious prodded for control of her mind once more. A memory of a lesson, of when she had gone straight to the dark. Luke’s voice guided her and she reached out. All around her, in the skies above, the sea below, battling on the rocky shore. 

The living force. 

She would give all of herself so that Ben Solo might live. 

And so, reaching into her broken chest she found her own life force, the thing that spurred her heart to beat and lungs to breathe, and beckoned it go to Ben. 

The force around her seemed to protest, and light began to accumulate at her fingertips, not her own but raw, unrefined energy drawn from the air. 

Rey pressed her hands to Ben’s chest and leaned over him, sealing her lips to his in a rain-wet kiss. 

And from her lips he breathed life. 

Eyelids fluttering, he came back to her. 

Clutching his head to her chest she sobbed.

Palpatine emerged from the mist behind them. 

*

He kissed her jaw, then her mouth. Her eyes were amber, fingers still glowing with residual energy from his revival. For a moment his whole world was Rey come back to him and the rain that soaked their bodies. 

Then, over her shoulder, he saw Palpatine. A spectre more than anything, still it moved towards them, sagging face split in a menacing grin. Emperor Sheev Palpatine, Darth Sidious, bane of the Skywalker family. 

Ben and Rey rose together, Rey’s sabers flaring to life, sizzling in the downpour. Ben’s own had flown from his hand when he was shocked. It lay in a puddle across the field. He had an idea. 

So did Rey. 

_It has to be the Skywalker saber_, Rey said into his mind, their bond restored running with emotion. 

He nodded. Rey would serve as a distraction. 

She moved like water, like the rain that dashed the platform around them. She spun around the slow moving spectre, the crimson beams of her saber phasing through him. He laughed, and violet lighting danced from his fingertips, shocking the ground at her feet . 

Rey, grimacing, grabbed her saber in both hands and split it at the hilt. It came apart easily, like it had been designed to do so, and suddenly she had not one staff but twin blades. 

Ben, seeing Palpatine suitably distracted, switched his own saber to life from across the battlefield. 

In mirror of the throne room, he lifted it cautiously into the air then sent it hurtling towards the ghost of Sheev Palpatine. Rey, smiling, backflipped away, landing softly beside him. 

The spinning saber tore through the spectre, and the force shook as it was ripped brutally in two. 

Sheev screamed and the sky lit up with lighting, the ruins of the Death Star shaking. It began to crumble beneath their feet, the thing that had tied Sidious’ spirit to the living world. 

They looked to one another, wide eyed, Ben called his saber back to him, and they ran. 

*

Victory. The Resistance was victorious. The war was won, the First Order was defeated. An age old evil was vanquished. 

Yet Rey ached. Her mind still struggled to discern the truth, and heart still throbbed at Ben’s death. _Her fault. _So much death and grief could have been spared had she not turned, had she not fallen to the darkness and listened to the creeping voice in her head. 

She could not celebrate. Relegating herself to the _Falcon_ she laid on the bed in the captains quarters, still wearing her drenched black robes. She could not face them; her friends, her allies. She had only wanted to protect them, only wanted them to love her like she loved them. 

Rey curled in on herself and shut her eyes against the tears. 

“Rey?” A voice, soft and deep. 

She could not face him either, she had gotten him _killed_. 

“Go away.” Moaning into her arm she curled in tighter on herself, clutching her knees to her chest. 

He said nothing, and she felt the mattress dip with his weight. Breath stirred her hair, soft lips pressed against her jaw. 

“I love you.” Easy as breathing, he spoke those words. 

“I know he put lies in your head, told you that no one loved you, no one ever could,” she choked on a sob and he continued, “But those people out there, they are so glad to have you back, they were so afraid when you left, Rey.” 

She said nothing. It all felt unreal. 

“And I_—” _Tears against her skin, his steady voice suddenly shaky, “I was so afraid. I know that pain Rey, what its like to have your worst fears used to torture you.”

Rey sniffled and clutched a large hand in both of her own, playing with his fingers. 

“I love you.” He said again, and then he scooped her into his arms, “You’re freezing.” 

“I’m sorry.” She whispered as he set her down on the ‘fresher floor.

The shower came alive and he tested the water for temperature. 

“Sorry for what?” Ben murmured, helping her out of her robes. He kissed her mouth, her neck, her shoulder, breast and flat stomach. 

“You died.” She whispered, “Ben you died and it was my fault. You fucking died. You were dead in my arms. I watched you die and did _nothing!” _She sobbed and he shushed her, walking her back into the stream of hot water. 

Warmth rushed over her and he crushed his mouth to hers in a kiss, she cried into him, against him, clutching at his soaking robes. 

“You were possessed, Palpatine was using you against me. Because I love you, and you love me. He knew that watching me die would break you, and rid him of another enemy. It wasn’t your fault, Rey.” He pressed his full mouth to her forehead, and said the words again, knowing that she needed to hear them, “I love you. _You saved me_, in more ways than one.” 

“I’m evil.” She whispered, “The darkness consumed me.” 

“We both have our darkness, and our light. We don’t have to be entirely one or the other. The reason it pushed you over the edge is that Palpatine wanted you unbalanced, so he fed your darkness until it swallowed you.” 

Rey said nothing, fingers locked into his robes. 

Ben continued, “You were never evil, he was torturing you.” Now it was his turn to cry. 

His anguish spurred Rey and she kissed him, softly at first, then hard. Their tears mingled and their hands wandered, and eventually they managed to peel off Ben’s grey robes so that they were equally bare. 

He kissed her face, and her neck, his hands found her breasts and tweaked her nipples. His fingers left trails of fire in their wake and Rey moaned. 

She reached for the bond between then and opened it fully, so that the sensations might bleed, so that the line between Rey and Ben became unclear. 

His fingers pressed against her cunt and a small hand wrapped around his cock, stroking him with aching slowness as he worked her clit. She whimpered and nipped at his collar bone. 

Ben Solo was a beautiful man, all ivory skin and ebony hair, eyes like onyx and a body that could have been carved from marble. His cock hung heavy between his legs, water following the ‘v’ of his powerful hips. 

Rey was overcome by the thought that she wanted him inside, she was achingly empty, desperately hot. 

Seeing her want through their bond, Ben hummed and hoisted her up wordlessly, pressing her back against the warm tile of the wall. Rey let go of his cock and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, legs around his waist. 

He pressed in with a single, gentle stroke and they both gasped. Beyond the initial sting the fullness of him was immensely satisfying. And through the bond, feeling what he felt, Rey knew the hot squeeze and slide of her cunt was sublime. Ben groaned and set a gentle pace. 

“I love you, Rey.” He said into her wet skin, “I love you so fucking much, it hurts.” 

She couldn’t reply, his pace increasing, wet skin slapping, she kissed his scar then his mouth, hard, and curled her fingers into his hair. 

Their pleasure melding, bleeding between them, she felt him swell a little inside of her as her body clenched on his cock. Rey broke the kiss, their eyes meeting, onyx and amber. And they came. 

Vision whiting out Rey threw her head and gasped at the feeling of wet warmth blooming inside of her. 

Ben’s hands gripped her hips with bruising force, as he groaned into the curve of her arching throat. 

And then it was over, Ben let Rey down to her feet and clutched her to his broad, bare chest. Pressing his face to her hair he cradled her with such reverence that she thought she might cry again. 

“You can be dark and light, Rey.” He whispered, “You never have to choose.” 

“Okay.” She nuzzled into his pec, never wanting to leave this shower, never wanting to leave the safety of his arms. 

“None of this was your fault.” He murmured, pressing a kiss to the shell of her ear. 

Rey hummed and replied, “It wasn’t yours either, then.” 

“Okay.” 

Then after a moments silence he whispered again, like a most cherished secret, “I love you, more than anything.” 

With a shaky breath, she replied, “I love you, too, Ben. More than anything.” 

**Author's Note:**

> My tumblr where the original prompt for this is from: [dvrkrey](https://dvrkrey.tumblr.com/) (if you were following me before I deleted and remade, so double check. 
> 
> Feedback is literally what drives me to write more, y'all!!


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